Hattie said he sat near the end of the table with a scotch he wasn’t really drinking, and he looked hollowed out — like a man attending a celebration of something he could no longer feel.

I’ve thought about that a great deal.

I think some part of him already sensed that the ground under the whole performance was rotten.

He just didn’t know yet where it would give way.

Chapter 10 — The Announcement

When the pies came out, Rosalind stood.

She picked up a spoon and tapped it against her glass until the long table went quiet, twenty faces turning toward the head of it, and she beamed down the length of them at the young mother and the little boy.

“Before we cut the pie,” she said, “I have something to tell you all.” She let the pause stretch, enjoying it — she was, Hattie said, a woman who loved an audience and had gone years without a decent one.